Everyone can make art at the Tate Modern!

The Tate Modern in September 2014, Photo Inexhibit

Bloomberg Connects at the Tate Modern

Since September 2013, the Tate Modern in London features Bloomberg Connects, an ensemble of digital interactive projects supported by Bloomberg and installed in various spaces at the museum. The projects are aimed to invite all to interact with artists and other visitors as well as to allow everyone to leave a trace of his presence by providing a creative contribution.

In June 2016, on the occasion of the opening of the much anticipate Switch House extension of the Tate Modern, once again designed by Herzog & de Meuron architects, an enlarged and improved version of Bloomberg Connects was inaugurated.

The “backbone” of the project is constituted by 75 interactive points – half of which are installed in the central staircase – through which visitors can leave comments about their experience at the Tate, post opinions on various topics, watch videos, suggest alternative captions for the artworks on view in the museum, and more.

Top and bottom: the interactive points on the central staircase; photos Inexhibit

The interactive network, conceived by Jason Bruges Studio, was built up by using reconfigured monitors and terminal screens donated by Bloomberg and equipped with Raspberry Pi units, credit-card-size computers developed in the UK to promote the learning of computer science in schools. The units react to people’s presence, attracting and inviting visitors to freely interact with the system.

Top and middle: Interactive points located on the internal balcony overlooking the Turbine Hall
Bottom: A Raspberry- Pi Unit. Photo by Jan Grosser.

The system is constituted of three main elements/systems.

Bloomberg Connects – Drawing Bar. An array of interactive touch screens, installed on the third level of the Tate Modern’s building, is the instrument through which visitors are free to express and share their creativity by adding their personal “tile” to a virtual mosaic aimed to represent the Tate users’ imagination. Through the Drawing Bar, it is possible to trace a drawing by using one of the available sketch pads and immediately see the work becoming part of a large projection superimposed on the back wall, this way everyone can become a co-creator of fluid and constantly-changing collaborative digital artwork.

Top: The Drawing board viewed from the 3rd level lobby. Photo by Riccardo Bianchini, Inexhibit
Middle and bottom: Bloomberg Connects drawing board. Courtesy of Tate Modern

Global Studios, is another element of the project: artists from all over the world invite visitors to take a virtual tour of their ateliers, and reply to questions posed by the public, the resulting videos are published on the internet and displayed on a series of monitors installed at the Tate.

Bloomberg Connects multimedia guide is a learning and interaction tool aimed to facilitate a better comprehension of the artworks exhibited at the Tate.
Through the guide, the public can watch artists at work, hear them talking about their experience, give an ear to the music that they listen to, apprehend the critics’ points of view, and play with various art-related interactive applications.